Ethereum (ETH) has reclaimed its position as the largest altcoin by market cap, data provided by CoinMarketCap shows on Wednesday, Jan. 2.

The asset is up over 8% over the last 24 hours while other virtual currencies are showing signs of reversing the downward trend at the beginning of the new year.

At press time (09:45 UTC), ETH was changing hands at about $147, other biggest gainers in the CMC Top-10 are Litecoin (LTC) – up to $32.26 with 4,37% growth, and EOS ($2.68 ; + 3,20%). Ether’s 24-hour trading volume was $2.56 billion and its market capitalization stands at $15.30 billion.

Ripple’s XRP has occupied the second spot for several month but now is valued at $14.80 billion and has a 24-hour trading volume of $435.8 million.

Ethereum is likely to retain the second position due to impending hype that will surround the Constantinople upgrade. The hard fork upgrade will take place in about two weeks and will see the network’s capacity increase to over 1,000 transactions per second.

Bitcoin (BTC) is up 2,04% and is changing hands at $3,840 on average ($3947 on Bitfinex and $3,795 on Bitstamp).